Sylvia's Journal

I am back in Pretoria, a touchdown that is supposed to be a bit longer than the previous touchdowns. My return trip to the US has been rescheduled for March 26. I will have managed to have spent most of the two worst winter months in the southern hemisphere. It is worth living in hotels for 6 weeks.

I left Maseru under heavy clouds and thunderstorms and arrived in Jo’burg a little ahead of these same (?) clouds and thunderstorms. I still react poorly to the loud thunderclaps, looking quickly around me to see whether anyone is alarmed. No one is; in fact people here love what I would call bad weather here as it cleans the air and lowers the temperature.

I left Lesotho on Moshoeshoe Day – it was not clear whether it was his birthday (would anyone know?) or the day of his death (surely recorded by the missionaries as it was the day before his christening). At the hotel all the staff was dressed in traditional costumes and the ladies behind the reception counter couldn’t help wiggle their impressive behinds on the beat of the local band that played in the bar area.

Across town and across the nation there were lots of sport games; we had seen busses stuffed with uniformed school children amassing in various towns on our way back from Butha Buthe. But it was not a day off for the immigration officer at the airport who told me, with a sad face, that she didn’t get to celebrate the nation’s founder’s death day. For her it was about death, not birth. Maybe that’s why she didn’t get the day off.

I am back in the lovely guesthouse on the outskirts of Pretoria. It has as its byline ‘the discerning businessman’s choice.’ This is odd because I have so far only seen one business man here (from Texas) and the rest were all women. The rooms are decorated with a woman’s touch for a woman’s taste.

Everything is greasy, my smartphone, my computer keyboard, my glasses. I emerged from my weekly massage with a thick coat of oil. It was Patience once again who covered me with oil and started to knead my sore and unused muscles in a way that made me flinch. This time I asked her to be a bit gentler, so I could enjoy the massage even more. She didn’t use the smooth and slippery stones this time, burning hot in a nice way; I guess I forgot to specify this detail.

The rest of the day was about completion – completing multiple reports – and closure of a magnificent two weeks in Lesotho. I didn’t mind the work, after all, what else is there to do when you are in a hotel on the top of a hill? In the morning my colleagues joined me on their day off – consultants are a lot of extra work. We sat on the terrace looking out over the vast plains around Maseru under a blue sky with a nice cool breeze and discussed work, language, congruence and philosopy.

We sent our youngest colleague home after an hour, knowing that his young wife, 9 months pregnant, was waiting for him in the car outside. We couldn’t get her to come in and sit with us – a clear demarcation between work life and personal life that I didn’t want to impose any longer than needed. We reviewed some critical documents that serve as a basis for all the work planned for the future, including the phasing out of our presence and resources. Rarely do projects have exit strategies but this one is trying to get it on paper – not an easy task.

The team leader joined me for dinner in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and we talked for hours – he likes talking and I like listening, making us a well-balanced pair. I continue to learn more about the dynamics of the project through these conversations and hope that I can bend some of them around into more productive avenues in the next few weeks. I am not quite sure how but, as a good Quaker, I know ‘way will open.’

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Hand in hand we stand – China and Lesotho, said the T-shirt of a group of people in the hotel. It’s a funny statement for a stealth invasion – it really should say ‘hand us the ground on which you stand.’ One day all will become clear, and then it is too late.

Late Wednesday afternoon we drove some two hours northwest of Maseru, along the South African border for a good part of our journey. We passed the Chinese textile factories – many of them closed now – in a town that grew up around these factories – I don’t think it was about hand in hand what happened there although it was employment while it lasted.

Employment is a huge problem here. I have never seen so many primary and high schools driving two hours out of the capital city. Everywhere we saw boys and girls in uniforms streaming out of schools and homeward. It was sobering to think of these kids, high school diploma in hand, applying for the dwindling jobs in these factories that were closing.

We spent two days in a workshop (the participants referred to it as ‘being workshoppped’) with a multidisciplinary team that has been given the mandate to protect children in this district. Never have I seen so much power in a room to do something good for children: lawyers from the High Court and the Magistrate’s Office, teachers from schools, nurses and counselors from hospitals, social workers from the government, a pastor from a collection of churches, a police woman, someone from the prison system and a registrar of vital statistics. The leader of the team was a young woman, appointed by the District Council Secretary.

But the group felt all but powerful – bewildered about a long list of functions that assumed they would report on statistics that weren’t there and enforce legislation and policies that they hardly knew, contained in thick tomes of which there was only one copy in the entire district.

We helped them discover their own understanding of why they were there and spent much time dreaming about what could be. The second day we came down from the lofty and far away future to put some wheels under their dreams and start moving, however slowly, to a place where their power would begin to show.

At the end of day one I drove with my two colleagues to a nearby set of caves where the nation’s founder had spent some time before his ascent of Thana Bosiu. The caves have ancient drawings on their walls from the San who lived here long before the Basutho moved in. The light was just fading when we got there. Thanks to our smart phones we were able to see some of the most amazing and ancient drawings before the light disappeared.

The second day we struggled through periods of high and low energy. The best antidote, we discovered, to low energy was simply turning up the music: Hugh Masekela, Don Laka, the Soweto String Quartet, Jimmy Dludlu or Mahala Jackson – everyone started to dance.

In the end the district team made a commitment to attend to the small actions that will move them, however slowly, towards fulfilling their role in the government’s grant scheme to protect the nations children. My MSH team mates performed with great talent and skill. They will conduct a similar event in another district next week. They are all riled up and confident, and so am I.

At the end everyone was treated to a braai, the South African version of barbecue, a favorite pastime in this part of the world during the weekend, with lots and lots of meat, sausage and chicken.

I was told by a neighbor, over Skype, that I am on the ballot and will probably make it onto the town democratic committee. I now vaguely remember, during a cold wintry evening visit by one of the organizers in town, that I was gently encouraged to participate in the grassroots democratic process. I said yes, not knowing exactly what I was getting into. We will see.

This same neighbor, who makes a virtue out of knowing trivia, told me that the lowest point in Lesotho is the highest lowest point in the world. Fancy that!

Some other facts about Lesotho are not so cool: In Lesotho, the HIV prevalence rate of 23% is the third highest in the world, with a much higher percentage among women (27%) than men (18%). The HIV prevalence among 25-29 year olds is 35% for females and 18% among males (Lesotho Democratic Health Survey 2009). An unpleasant side effect of this is that the number of orphans (0-17) has gone up from 130,245 in 1996 to nearly a quarter of a million reflecting a 41% rise over a ten-year period according to the last population census, which happened 6 years ago. Children are made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS long before their parents die. Although there are no data available on the number of other vulnerable children, it is most likely that it exceeds the number of those who are orphaned.

And so this is reason why we are here, as an organization, with a project that has as its aim to help the government of Lesotho make sure that these children are taken care of, get the medical and psycho-social services they need, school fees paid and what not. This is the only way that they will have a shot at growing up to be productive citizen and take over the task from their elders to get people to change their behavior and reduce rampant poverty and all its deleterious side effects.

This is a peaceful country, something that would please its founder, Moshoeshoe, a man who struggled most of his life with conflict and angry neighbors, because, paradoxically, he always selected the more peaceful solution when they came calling.

One telltale sign of the peacefulness here is the way security works. Like any other place in the world, probably a legacy of 9/11, everywhere are barriers and booms and lanyards with security cards and security personnel armed with the paddles that beep if they come across something suspicious. Yet at the ministry the card that allows you through the turnstile is sitting on the turnstile, not around the neck of a human being in uniform. Anyone wanting to get inside simply swipes the card and places it back on the turnstile.

At the hotel the guards standing at the entrance never use their paddles, there is no gate one has to walk through and the ‘security incident’ record book sits forlornly and unused on a shelf in the lobby. I love it.

Our driver told me he can leave his wallet on the car seat and it will still be there when he gets back. When I insisted he put my backpack, which contains my life (passport, computer, cellphone, etc), in the boot of the car he said it wasn’t necessary. OK, so it may not be like Jo’burg.

But I am getting some pieces of information that indicate a violent streak underneath the amiable presenting surface: a peace corps volunteer was killed one year, another raped and there is much abuse of children and women, by family members and those who are supposed to help them.

The culprit seems to be alcohol, widely, cheaply and easily available. The bars at the hotel have an extraordinary collection of hard liquor. There are places that sell beer everywhere, well-advertised and clearly visible from a distance. One of my drivers, who had a can of beer in his car’s cup holder, told me that even an open beer container would not be a problem. Having a liter of beer would not be a reason to take a taxi or stay put – he was astonished about the strict rules in Holland and the US – what, no driving after a few pints of beer?

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I had been eyeing the gym down in the basement but its loud thumping music has scared me away. I did feel like I had to do some exercise with all those buffet dinners and breakfasts. After a few hours of work, that opportunity offered itself. But I was reminded in rather painful ways that I have gotten quite a bit older since I was first here – both in mind and in body.

I had hired a driver to come and pick me up at 9:30 to help me escape from the hotel. He suggested a trip to Morija and Thaba Bosiu. My ears perked up – those were just the two places I had been reading about and I was anxious to see for myself what they were like.

First we drove to Morija. It is the place where the first French missionaries settled around the 1820s. They became very close to the Basutho Chief. Casalis, the first of them, played a role of spiritual and later also political guidance counselor and stood by the Basutho Chief through a lot of turmoil during most of his career. There is a little museum in Morija with faded pictures of those days, the first chief and his descendants (up to now) and stuffed animals, artifacts and pieces of the meteor (and pictures of those who found them) that fell in this area some 9 years ago.

My driver suggested I go up the mountain and see the dinosaur foot. An 11 years old guide, Popi, offered to take me up for about 4 dollars. The driver stayed behind saying ‘been there, done that.’ Innocently and full of youthful arrogance I followed the young boy straight up the steep slope of the mountain for about 45 minutes exactly at the hottest part of the day. Older doesn’t always mean wiser!

Living in hotels had been easy on my joints and so I thought I was good to go. The boy was cool, walking slowly, drinking my water and asking me a thousand questions in his 4th grade English. After the questions about family came the questions about cars (yes, he knew what a Subaru was), about church (who did I go to see there) and places I had been. He spelled the Sesotho names of some magnificent birds we saw, apologizing for not knowing the English names.

The destination of the climb turned out to be a variant on Old Man in the Mountains – a rock formation that, with some imagination, could be a giant footprint of some pre-historical animal. When I asked him which animal he said yes to all my suggestions: lion, puma, tiger, elephant. He didn’t seem to understand dinosaur which was the reason I had climbed all the way up there. I felt a bit misled.

Walking down was another ordeal and severely tested my ankle and knee joints. By the time I came back to the tiny guesthouse from where tours are arranged I had the color of a boiled lobster.

While I was waiting for my driver and replenishing liquids I fell in with a small French/South African party. As it turned out they had grown up in Lesotho and one woman was the great-great-grandchild of one of these first missionaries.
I don’t think these missionaries could, in their wildest dreams, have imagined the success of bringing the gospel to Lesotho. All during the day we saw throngs of women and men, dressed in capes with colorful ribbons and sashes that, I presumed, showed which church they belonged to. They did fail to convert the first Chief, who died one day before his baptism. That must have been a big disappointment.

The second stop of my sightseeing tour was the mountain (Mountain of the Night). According to the biography I read it was given that name because the first Basuthos to arrive there under Moshoehoe’s leadership climbed the mountain at night, fleeing from marauding tribes. But my driver told me otherwise. “You see,” he said, “the old Bashutos seem to think that mountains grew overnight.” I imagined something much older than these first Basuthos, when the earth was boiling and volcanoes popped up everywhere like basty pimples. The landscape does look a little pimply.

Moshoeshoe (Moshoesh for short) spent most of his adult life on this flat mountain top, keeping maurauders and attackers down. All the while some of his own people did the marauding in the flats where the Boers were whenever they ran out of meat and grains (and later weapons). It was an endless and lethal game of tit-for-tat.

As we walked up the steep path to the top of the mountain, more insult and injury to the already worn joints, snippets of vague memories started to come into my conscious. When we turned a corner I realized I had done this trip before, 21 years ago. It was as if a light in a dark corner of my brain suddenly was turned on, like the clothes closet in my hotel room – when you open the door the light goes on. Of course I had been here and explored the mountain top, with Michael, when I was young and supple and probably raced up and down without any effort.

Lesotho must be the only place in the world where you have to walk up a mountain to see the grave of the nation’s founder – an unassuming pile of rocks that stand in sharp contrast to the marbled mausoleum of the current king’s father who died in 1995. All that stuff was brought in my helicopter no doubt.

At the base of the mountain a giant re-creation of the mountain top ‘kraals’ is nearly finished but not open yet. For now the few tourists are cramped in a few open rondavels with braai pits. The Seventh Day Adventists were on an outing, travelling in buses with HIV/AIDS messages all over them (we pray for, no against, HIV/AIDS). Although praying is not an approved public health measure, in this country with its staggering numbers of infected people, anything is welcome.

There is not that much to see at the top, except for the giant agave plants that used to delineate kraals, and a few roughhewn structures – the chief’s house among others – built by and Irish builder who has escaped from the war on the flatlands. On the request of the chief, dictated by one of the missionaries, he excused for his AWOL by the Brits and so he continued building. If there had been water lapping at the edges of the plateau, you could have imagined being in Ireland.

The final descent was a killer – my painful joints and feet complained as I carefully positioned my feet on the millions of small and larger rocks that had been thrown throughout the 1800s from the top to keep the attackers down. It made for a very bumpy road up at the time and now it makes for a very bumpy road both ways, but especially down.

T’s mom was the Planned Parenthood volunteer coordinator who hired and trained me, some 25 years ago as a counselor in Cambridge with the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. He is now a peace corps volunteer in Lesotho. He traveled 5 hours to come and see this friend of his mom.

He called me when he arrived in town and told me he was going to be a little late as he had to take advantage of being in the big city and stock up on things not easily available where he lives. I asked what that was: canned tuna fish! The things we take for granted.

We compared notes on working with the public sector, he in agriculture now – setting up a fisheries scheme at the local hospital, but child welfare in the future; me, for now, with child welfare. He is getting a good grounding in dynamics that some people never quite get, such as, ‘people don’t change just because you tell them to.’ It’s basic but will save you from major heartache and disillusion later.

He has decided he will continue in international development, in one direction or another. He is about nine months into a Peace Corps assignment and loves it. I told him that if I have two candidates who have equal credentials for a job, I’d hire the Peace Corps volunteer any time. I think it is a great preparation for the kind of career he is choosing for himself, or, for that matter, for life, anywhere.

Today an early morning massage at the iron hands of diminuative Patience and my lunch with T provided some distraction from an intense relationship with my computer. To break the monotony of hotel life, which revolves essentially around meals, I have decided to arrange a short sightseeing trip tomorrow to Thaba Bosiu, the ‘Hill of Destiny,’ where the founder of this country, Moshoeshoe, spent most of his adult life. From atop that hill, during a good part of the 1800s, he resisted countless attempts by neighboring tribes, including the Zulu, the Matabele, the Boers and the British, to subdue him. Having finished reading his biography I would like to see this historical place. I am told it is close by and worth a visit. The nice gentleman from Perfect Taxi, with the unpronounceable name, promised to call me back early morning with a quote and a plan.

It is weekend now and the slot machines are running at full tilt. One of the machines is like a telephone booth with glass on all four sides. A man stands inside while a powerful blower whirls 200 Rand notes around him. He has to try to grab as many as he can. It sounds easier than it is. He has to stuff the caught notes in a slot on the front of the booth, the stuffing takes some effort and makes for lost time. He doesn’t get as many notes as I thought he would. And then the blower stops and he has to get out. I assume he had to pay for the privilege of money blown at him. Weird.

The casino will be open till 5 AM tomorrow (Sunday) morning, nonstop. Luckily my room is far removed from that excitement; it is quiet on the fourth floor.

Buffet dinner was half price tonight, I am not sure why, but it was clear Maseru knew about this as there was a long line of people wanting to get in.

I went back to the hotel early; my colleagues were busy running other parts of the program and there was no point in staying in the office. Here too Friday is quiet day. We received the self-assessment from the chief and I have started to comb my files for specific materials, while waiting for cross validation from people on her team.

Workshops in the districts are being organized, not an easy thing here. This means some travel and another 12 days in Lesotho to accommodate all this.

Weekend is not entirely restful as it is the time to pay attention to other stuff I promised to complete by this weekend. But tomorrow at 9 AM I will present myself at the spa for a full body massage.

For dinner I ordered a Greek salad, guess my surprise when I got this:

I spent most of yesterday pulling together observations from my own experience, looking at executive competencies, reading my file about ‘the specialness of the public sector’ to come up with a profile for a self-assessment by the chief. She asked for it and today we delivered it. It will form the foundation on which to develop a customized executive leadership program. She promised to fill it in before the weekend and asked the UNICEF consultant who we consider part of our team, to give it to a cross-section of her staff – to validate (or contradict) her own assessment.

In the meantime she has asked to already put together a package of materials for her to work on while she travels out of the country. There appears no time to spare. I love the challenge and will spend tomorrow combing through my ‘Eng Materials’ file to put something together.

The teambuilding retreat with her team will have to happen after I have left but I will be able to interview various staff and help with the design. That too is exciting. And then there are some short workshops with various district level coordination teams that we will pilot – an attempt to help put some wheels under the coordination that these teams have to do. We received the green light for all of these.

The MSH project I am consulting to is run by an Indian doctor whose style is thoughtful and collaborative in a way I have not seen in years. He took me over to one of our partners today. It was refreshing to see how much effort he puts into aligning agendas and approaches. It effectively doubles his manpower and leaves me feeling good about carrying through what is being started. This is how things should be in the usually much more competitive world of technical assisters and developers.

Back at the hotel I watched part II of one of Donald Trumps apprentice schemes. This one is where a group of male and a group of female superstars (film, music, acting, sports, etc.) must accomplish some challenging assignments (raise money selling 10.000 pizza slices and writing, publishing and performing a children’s story all in one day). We can then watch them, as in a fishbowl, and see how they handle (or don’t handle) the stress that gets generated when you put eight prima donnas in a pressure cooker. Trump, and what I believe are two of his sons, act like A.K. Rice consultants, asking the kind of questions that bring out our survival reflexes.

It is hard to understand what compelled these famous people to engage in such an activity that leads to complete emotional undress. It can’t be money, as these stars belong to the super rich. May be it is some perverse sense of serving society (the proceeds from their assignment go to a charity of their choice).

I had just finished re-reading Eric Berne’s Games People Play. And so I was able to test my knowledge of the games. The show is full of them. There is NIGYSOB (Now I Got You Son of a Bitch), or SWYMD (See What You Made me Do), or IOTBH (I Am Only Trying To Help You). The bonus feature of having individuals speak privately (if on camera can be considered private) and candidly about what they think of some of their team mates just added to the drama – one Child wanting to talk as an Adult but speaking like a Parent to another Child who also pretends to be an Adult. In fact I saw very few Adults, and mostly stern Parents and hurt Children. I highly recommend the combination of Berne and Trump, it is a delicious stew.